The Yankees will play, but for now, kids won't

By BILL EGBERT

Dec 02, 2008 | 3:41 AM

Macombs Dam Park is getting a make over. (Simmons/News/New York Daily News)

While the Yankees will soon have two baseball stadiums at their disposal, the community whose parks were absorbed for the new stadium could be left without any regulation ballfield in the neighborhood for a year or more.

Scheduled tours of the historic stadium ended last month, but the ballclub isn't expected to vacate the old stadium until spring.

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That's even as the team prepares to open the 2009 season across the street at its new stadium, built atop Macombs Dam Park, which held all four of the neighborhood's grass baseball diamonds.

"There is great irony that the world's wealthiest baseball club is taking away fields from the poorest community in America," said Geoff Croft, of NYC Park Advocates.

While the law requires the city to replace all of the recreational facilities taken for the new stadium, most of the replacements are planned as rooftop parks on new garages, yet to be built.

But Heritage Field, the replacement for three of the four grass baseball fields, will be where the old stadium now stands, so work can't even begin until the House that Ruth Built comes down - which is expected to take a year, with work not set to begin until April.

For now, neighborhood sluggers can play on an interim baseball field just north of the old stadium, but that sits on land earmarked for Garage C of the new complex, scheduled to begin construction in the spring.

So between then and the completion of Heritage Field in 2011, the nearest regulation baseball fields open to the public will be at Public School 29 at Courtlandt Ave. and at the West Bronx Recreation Center more than a mile away.

Borough President Adolfo Carrión, a strong backer of the stadium project, made clear from the outset that his support hinged on the city's assurance that the neighborhood would have uninterrupted access to interim park facilities in the area.

In October, Carrión wrote to city officials complaining that the construction schedule would also close the interim running track - which now wraps around the interim baseball field - when work begins on Garage C, and it won't be fully replaced until the rooftop park on Garage A is finished in late 2009.

The city plans to create another interim running track for the summer atop the partially completed Garage A, but park activists point out that the track will be on artificial turf, a material which can dangerously overheat athletes.